


Ma Serranas

by Pyria



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, Solavellan, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-06 00:39:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15182906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyria/pseuds/Pyria
Summary: The veil is gone, the inquisition is shattered, and nearly everyone Pyria Lavellan had known gave their lives to stop Fen'Harel. She should have just stopped, she could have just died. But her anger kept her hunting Fen'Harel everywhere he dared to hide. She finally makes her way to him but, nothing every goes quite as she plans itI have revamped this work into a seperate fic , please see Halam’shivanas on my author page!





	1. Chapter 1

"Pyria go!"

Dorian's voice was hoarse as he kept trying to suck air into his punctured lung. The blood was coming out of his mouth now and Pyria knew it shouldn't have ever been like this. That should have been her.

There was nothing special about her now, the inquisition all but gone, her mark stolen from her just before it killed her.

How many times had she been saved from death when it should've been Varric being saved from his own crossbow, Cassandra being saved from a poison, or Dorian, saved from an arrow piercing through his lung.

He stared at her then, eyes incredulous as to what she could possibly be waiting for. They had opened the makeshift eluvian. All she needed to do was step through. All she needed to do was find him. She needed to stop him. But for one moment she allowed herself to be selfish. She turned away from the glittering and pulsating mirror she once would have marveled at.

He motioned violently with his hand toward the eluvian, his exasperation at her antics quickly leaving him in a fit of coughing, blood coming up on his once outstretched hand.

"I'm not leaving you." The words left her mouth before her mind had time to convince her that it wasn't a plausible solution.

"Darling, you and I both know what's going to happen if you try and take me through that mirror." His eyes softened then, understanding flashing across his eyes. 

"I don't, and I won't consider it." Pyria took a step towards him, her defiant leg trembling. The excessive amount of lyrium that had kept her going was finally beginning to wane. They had been through all of this together. They had been fighting for months to keep each other in tact, she wouldn't stop now.

She looked around her then, wondering if Dorian's reluctance to continue was warranted. They were surrounded, and had been for hours. If she looked just past the doorway she could see some of their forces, still fighting to their bloody deaths. And in front of her, her best friend, choking on his own blood. She should have had his back. She should have been right there next to him, but she had been working to get the eluvian going. Their last bastion of defense against Fen‘Harel had fallen. The Winter palace. The Irony of it all was not lost on her. She only wished they could have met their end at Skyhold. As close to home as she had been in recent memory.

She had been in hiding for three years. Three years was all it had taken for the might of the inquisition to crumble under the cunning of Fen'Harel's forces. They had fought just as hard as her forces, though she would never admit it out loud. She had been forced to stand tall and proud, her anger never allowed to waver as the face of her lover haunted her dreams. But she had long forgotten about that man now. Solas was just that, a man. Something she had been forced to separate from the God who had picked off her companions one by one, isolating her in a hellish reality where she no longer had a true clan, let alone her makeshift shemlen one. Their faces flashed before her eyes, Varric, Bull, Leliana, Josephine, Cullen, her friends, her clan. They had all fallen one by one. She had witnessed each of their deaths first hand, never wavering in her commitment to defend them until the very end. What good had it done them in the end? Very little. She hoped that her company might have at the very least provided solace. But of even that she couldn't be certain. None had the privilege of final words. Though all had, at her insistence, the great privilege of proper death rites.

For her real clan she could say much less. Her and Cullen had come to the conclusion at the war table one winter night that going to protect them physically and in the flesh would have drawn too much attention to them. She winced at the memory. She could have chosen any other path. Could have listened to Leliana's advice, even Josephine's. But she had tried to be pragmatic and it had left them defenseless and outnumbered when Fen’Harel did come. She only prayed that his face was not the last they saw. That when she met Solas again she could absolve him of that one sin. The report had come back to her long after Skyhold had been abandoned in favor of the various safe houses. She was lost then, just as she was now, standing before an Eluvian which could bring her to the end of her story, to the end for which all of her friends and clan had died for. But she was stuck in place. Forced to choose between leaving her friend to die alone, to complete a task neither of them were sure she could find the strength to do.

They had been making their way to this point for the better part of a year. They had finally found a way to place an eluvian portal on Fen‘Harel's person without actually constructing an eluvian. It was an easy enough trick. She had returned his wolf's jawbone. The trouble truly came from finding a way to conceal the enchantment. Vivienne Dorian and Pyria had spent countless hours pouring over old Tevinter tomes and had consulted mages from the furthest reaches of Thedas. But the answer had been right under her nose. They had used rift magic to conceal it. Specifically, they had channeled the essence of her mark into the bone. The enchantment had required cooperation between Dagna, Dorian and herself, the three of them hardly walked away from the ordeal alive. She remembered the way they had all laughed, glad to be alive for one more moment as the undercroft had filled with smoke. The memory left her with a small sad smirk.

The eluvian she looked at now was a dull imitation of the ones Solas had set up. In the last moments she had known him by that name. His were beautiful, had nearly brought tears to her eyes, and most likely would have had she not been marred by the severity of the situation. Dorian coughed once again, resigned to prop his body up against the nearest wall. She looked at his face then. Where there had once been tawny skin and grin lines, she found countless scars, irreparable by even Vivienne's healing magic. Part of his eyebrow had even been singed off and what was left in its wake was mangled and pink flesh. She kneeled down to him then, placing her hands on his chest as she poured the little amount of mana she had left into a lackluster healing spell.

"It'll be alright Pyria, you're going to kill that horribly horribly dressed God for me."

"What if I can't Dorian? What if I get there a-"

"You will, I know you will because you will not let all of these people who have followed you to the ends of the earth, quite literally, to die in vain. You wouldn't mock our souls in such a way." Dorian winced at that as Pyria's mana began to fade out, the pain returning to him slowly. He continued, “I won’t make it with you through that eluvian, and I would rather not spend my last moments crawling towards it. You don’t have any time left. I can hold anyone who comes after you off.”

“Dorian I-’”

“No. Go.” With no small amount of effort Dorian put his own hand to his wound, pushing Pyrias off of his body. He tilted his chin towards the eluvian as he reached for his staff. “I can buy you ten minutes, don’t waste my lst spells.” The last few words were grunted out through clenched teeth as he turned his body to face away from her.

“Now! Go!.” His eyebrows had knit together, frustration at Pyria’s lack of movement becoming readily apparent. 

She felt frozen to the ground, her last companion was giving his life, as all others had before him for some hope that she would be able to kill her vhenan, that she might be powerful enough to kill a God and live to oversee the aftermath. That she might be strong enough to watch the life leave his eyes. That she might actually know how to rebuild after this. That a Thedas without a veil could ever be normal again. 

She closed her eyes and took a breath, remembering the last words Cassandra had said to her. She could remember the moment clearly, she was wiping Sentinel blood off of her sword as they made camp one night. It has been her turn to keep watch. But she knew just as well as everyone else that Pyria had been awake, scouting the area for any possible threats. They had spoken for hours around the small fire, about what they would do when this was all over, where they would live, if they would go back to Skyhold. How foolish they had been then, to imagine it would ever be over. Pyria had confessed that she still loved him, and she was never sure if the path that she was taking was the correct one, whether she should really be the one leading her friends against him.

Cassandra had sighed at that, setting down her equipment, and the small moment of reprieve fading from her facial expression. “We can’t think about it now, we just have to keep moving forward. If we don’t keep moving he will kill us before we have the chance to do anything, even change our minds.”

The memory quickly left her as her feet regained their purpose. She leaned forward, pressing a chaste kiss to Dorian’s forehead. 

“Fuck em’ up Pavus.”

She turned away from him then, not allowing him to see the tears already falling from her eyes. The eluvian was already flickering as she made her way towards at a sprint, clutching her bruised, and likely broken ribs. She wasn’t sure how it would feel to travel through this makeshift eluvian but she clenched her jaw and dove head first into it, it couldn’t be any worse than what Dorian was about to experience. She dared one glance back at his already blurred form as the eluvian absorbed the rest of her body.


	2. Chapter 2

The pain was blinding. Clearly a makeshift eluvian wasn't going to be as smooth as the real deal. But this had not been remotely close to what she had expected. The sensation assaulting her skin could only be compared to being engulfed by electricity. She had lost track of time through her pain, and couldn't see anything other than the telltale grey fog of the abandoned crossroads. She couldn't even fight against the pain, her limbs tensed and paralyzed. This continued for what felt like a lifetime until she opened her eyes once again, and found herself thrown onto her hands and knees on a cold tiled floor. She didn't dare look up, this was not the most defend-able position she could have found herself in. As if by instinct, and she was almost sure at this point it was, she tucked her knees under her body, rolling quickly in the first direction she glanced at. The only noise that pointed to her and Dorian's success was the grunt of surprise that escaped Fen'Harel's mouth.

She dared glance up then, her curls falling quickly over her shoulders, weighed down by sweat. She winced slightly as she tried to push away the memory of the pain she had been in moments prior. The room was almost completely silent, large windows brought in an unnatural light, certainly not brought by the sun. The ceilings were vaulted going more stories high than Solas’s rotunda ever had. Puzzled, she strained her eyes, everything seemed to be shifting, the very texture of the structure was swirling if she focused hard enough. She shivered at what that might imply.

It was easy to hate him like this. He looked nothing like her Solas. His eyes glowed a vibrant gold, stolen from Mythal, as Leliana had once told her. His head was covered partially in a mask as he stood at a desk, the wood a world apart from the type in the rotunda at Skyhold. His posture seemed forced, and his scars had evaporated. Dressed only in rough metals and furs, she found his demeanor standoffish, and nothing like the wise and beautiful man she had once known.

His face was etched with pity as he glanced down at her. Forever judging, forever waiting for her to become something better. Someone less vindictive, less spiteful, someone more Elvhen.

"It is not pity Pyria." His gaze weakened for a moment and she wondered if his voice might have gotten a touch deeper since she spoke with him last. Though, at the time they were screaming.

She wasn't calm enough to ask him exactly how the loss of the veil had allowed him to be privy to her private thoughts.

"Then what is it? Disgust? Disappointment? Did I not become exactly what you made me?" She spat the words quietly, not sure how much longer they would have a moment alone. Her daggers weighed heavily in her waistband, and she struggled to keep the flames burning under her fingertips under control. She would need him to stay calm. She would need to get closer to him. Leliana and her had not been able to pinpoint the exact extent of his power once the veil had fallen. There were obvious displays of power that had left them speechless and terrified but there wasn’t much they could say about how much would truly expend him once he had his hands on a restored orb.

She surveyed the room, pushing aside her earlier suspicion that he might have needed to keep it physically close to his body. She could sense no orb near her, nor could she see any type of device which might have been able to tame the type of mana that would pour from such an object.That certainly made things more difficult.

“I did not make you anything Vhenan I-”

“Don’t you ever say that word to me again.” Heat flashed in her chest, her breath coming quicker, adrenaline running through her veins. She could feel the heat under her bare feet heating the swirling marble beneath her. Her magic was her own in this place, whatever and wherever it was. If she was being completely honest with herself, it hadn’t been in her control since the fall of the veil. She had drawn from the fade freely during her time at skyhold, under the supervision of not only Solas, but her Trainer. Now she wasn’t sure what to pull from. The element which had always come the fastest to her, was fighting against her own reserves of mana. She felt as if her emotions were pulling at her mana themselves, as if she had somehow ceded power to her anger. His arrogance never ceased to amaze her. To think that he truly believed that he was still her heart that she could possibly feel anything for disgust for a man who had taken everything from her.

“Pyria. Pyria calm down.” He made a gesture towards her, her feet instantly cooling. She closed her eyes, willing her chest to loosen. She needed to stay in control of this situation. She wouldn't let her anger destroy everything she had been working towards. Everything she had sacrificed. She thought of Dorian and allowed the memory of his last wink to motivate her into releasing her grip on her staff.

“Can we talk without you trying to kill me?” Her eyes widened, unsure if he was accusing her or trying his best at a joke. Nonetheless she aimed to keep her face neutral.

“I’m not sure what you want to talk about at this point Fen’Harel.” The name felt odd on her lips as she looked at the man before her.

The distance she had created between the idea of Fen’Harel, the God she denied to have any allegiance to or love for, and the man who had become such a permanent part of her life that she mourned the loss of him for several years. Solas, who had betrayed her, who had humiliated and confined her within an idea of an entire race of people. He had ripped the earth into two pieces, and left everyone who he had claimed to care for on the rockiest and driest edges, and had reserved the rest for a race of people so unconnected with the present that they had allowed genocide to fester in their name.

“I had hoped I could explain myself to you vhenan, I never meant to cause you harm.” He looked down at the prosthetic arm in place of the one he had ‘gently’ removed. She followed his line of sight and took a pause to look at her prosthetic as well. 

She saw before her Dagna and Harritt endlessly arguing about how exactly it should fit on her arm. She didn’t know how many times between the both of them she had gone to the undercroft late at night to get it adjusted. At first she was flustered, embarrassed to have to ask for aid when she was unable to undo her pants, or even for the task of lifting a hair brush. But repeatedly, as if rehearsed, they both always referred to her as their family, for whom, such a task would never be an inconvenience. Their faces didn’t match the odd, sterile nature of her own surroundings. She knew it to be a hallucination brought on by mana exhaustion but she couldn’t help but wonder at how perfectly her mind had recreated them. The stubble on Harritt’s face made her want to reach out, just to be sure she wouldn’t feel the prickles of the ever present shadow under her fingertips. Her fingertips moved against her will as she reached for them.

Fen’Harel was still staring at her, pity lining his eyes as he glanced between the space in front of her and the motions she made with her fingers. He knew what memory she was seeing, and had seen it multiple times as he stepped into her dreams over the years. The Dwarf and the shemlen had held an important place in her heart, he knew that, and winced to imagine how this would affect her in the near future.

“They are not real.” Fen’Harel’s voice was barely above a whisper as it reached her ears. 

 

Her stomach sank.

For how long had she tried to convince his people, even him, that they were all real. That they were so real in fact they could murder his agents. They could slip poison into their own weapons. They could infiltrate their ranks, they could turn their own against them. Her breath began to heat up as it exited her mouth, the labored breathing causing Fen’Harel to back away. For how long had she tried to play nice? How many people had died while she tried the diplomatic approach. To make them realize that Humans, Qunaris, the Dalish and Dwarves weren’t incapable of having souls. That their intelligence could easily match any Elvhen given the chance. How many times had she let Fen’Harel strike against her people as she had pleaded with him to see the lives he took for granted. 

She threw her previous plans to the wind, and in an instant she was on top of him, snarling as fire erupted from her hand. Solas was faster, and almost seemed to anticipate her movements, using her momentum to pin her against the floor. Her head smacked against the swirling marble with a thud.

“We.Are.Real.” She pressed her hand towards his face, her rage still growing despite her opponent’s easy maneuvering and the blood beginning to slip down the back of her neck. With a swift movement she brought her knee and opposite hand together, in the exact manner The Iron Bull had taught her, Fen’Harel made the dangerous mistake of attempting to repin her shoulders and came into direct contact with the heat that surged out of her palm. At this, he jumped backwards regaining his balance as his eyes flashed yellow, matching her own shade momentarily as the burn quickly evaporated from his face.

The two were left on the floor, both breathing heavily as they matched each other eye for eye.

“I didn’t say you weren’t” It was clear at this point that she had begun to chip away at his patience. If he believed her to be an insolent child, then she would use it to her advantage. 

“Everyone else was real too. Everyone that you let die.” She eyed him as he failed to disguise a quick glance down to his gloved hands.

“I did not kill them.”

“You did not help them either.” She began to slowly move forward the weighted daggers weighing heavy on her conscience. He would not wash himself of this guilt, she would remind him of every last person she had lost. She would tell him how they died, what each of them had dreamed of. 

“I couldn’t” His voice broke for a moment, his stare breaking once again, his hand twitching. 

Pyria faltered, for a moment the shade of his eyes brought her back to her Solas. Her ever questioning and unsure Solas. The Solas who blundered through mistakes as if he was used to them. The Solas who might have just shown a shadow of remorse. She shook her head as he memories began to take physical form yet again. She knew he was capable of feeling remorse, but to see it written so clearly on his featured pushed a pang through her heart. 

She could empathize with his pain. She too had felt that everyone she had cared for, that her entire world was lost to her. Though, she was not the one to blame, she could at least externalize that part. Solas had been left with nobody to blame for this but himself. She believed the only people he could hate more than himself were the people who were a constant reminder of his failure, herself included. 

“I’m sorry.” The words escaped her mouth before she had a chance to catch them. She was sorry, that their lives had come to this, that they had allowed so much bloodshed. She was sorry that he felt forced to kill not only his people but hers as well.

“No, I am sorry. This-” He gestured between them, “-it was all real, I love you. I thought I would be ready to see you again. But this,-” His eyebrows raised as he looked down at her, humor smudging in the corner of his darkened eyes. “This was a shock.”

“I still have some tricks up my sleeve harellan.” She coughed over her own laugh then, amused at how easily he was able to make light of the situation. She rolled onto her side and her defensive posture dropped.

As if it had only been moments that they had been apart, as if at least ten thousand lives were not lost between the two of them, he moved closer, allowing her to lean against him.

She closed her eyes, her forehead resting against his chest momentarily as she allowed herself one last moment with him. She knew what he had done, but her rage was spent. There was little she could do to stop the flow of tears that began to erupt from her. 

It did not take long for the short bursts of tears to erupt into sobs. Regret racked through her as she fought to keep her throat from clenching around her words. She would have to betray him in this moment. She would not be able to stop herself from finishing her own path. She would be as stubborn as he was but she would not pretend that she could bear it. 

He met her forehead with his own, tears falling silently as he pressed against her with a gentle pressure. The dainty way in which he held her only brought more conflict to the surface of her face. Why could he not have been this man for the past five years. Why could he not have been her Solas. 

“I missed you Vhenan, I -” He swallowed past his hesitation. “I never thought you could come back to me.”

It tore through her last resolve to imagine his misunderstanding of the situation. He was gentle before her, broken and lost. How he had always been, confused in a world so far from his own. For all of his intelligence, for all of his pride and pompous misunderstanding, he was scared. To die alone, to miss his opportunity to see the people he loved again. Loneliness had overcome any kindness he might have had left. 

This was her home, here in his arms for so many years. She had trusted him, she had given him nearly everything. Her entire soul gravitated towards him, and for once her heart felt as if it were not weighed down. The knowledge that the moment would soon have to end did not deter her from pressing her nose deeper into the fur which fell over his shoulder.

She breathed in the scent of him, still familiar after all of these years. He smelled like her dreams, wood and sweat, pine and fur. She laid her hand on his forearm as it gathered her pool of dirt soaked tears. She wouldn’t fight any more after this. She would let the Gods take her. 

“Vhenan.” The word was heavy on her tongue, but she couldn’t deny how right it felt as it reverberated from her chest. He rested his forehead atop her head and sighed.

“I don’t want to fight anymore.” The words left her mouth, and she hoped they might sound convincing as she mumbled through his clothing.

“I know.” His acknowledgement was muttered as he sucked in a breath.

There was no part of her that could deny what would be the correct course of action. Certainly, there were parts of her which wanted desperately to tell him she was sorry, to tell him that she could forget everything. 

Pyria knew she would be a fool to think that anything could ever exist in any true form between them again. They had done too much to each other, and this man before her, as much as he looked and smelled like her Solas was a God. A murderous and selfish God. It did not matter that his feelings for her, whatever they were at this point, were genuine. He had taken the lives of so many she had loved. 

He had allowed her to run the inquisition into the ground trying to save him. She had sacrificed so many lives in her anger and her vengeance. Though she knew she would carry this guilt to her grave, she felt she could share it with him. His decisions had led them to this point. She had not held a knife to his throat and forced him to choose this path. She had not put up a fight for no reason. She had put up a fight so that she might preserve her way of life, the way of life that thousands were leading.

Restoration of Elvhen ways meant little to her in comparison to the existence of her friends, the existence of her enemies. There were plenty of other paths Solas could have taken. He had chosen this one, he had chosen the one path he had been treading towards a fruitless retribution, and he had done it all with no thought of what it would do to the people he had shared years with. Varric, Cassandra, Dorian, even The Iron Bull, they had all shared a laugh with him, had shared food and stories and dreams with him. She could not fathom how he could have let them go. They were real, and unlike the people of Fen’Harel, they had been alive. In flesh and blood, with beating hearts and warm hands.

She could not allow herself to give up on all of them without a fight, though he had allowed himself to. She would not throw herself at him a final time. Her purpose had finally clicked. When she had chosen Dirthamen so many years ago she had begun to prepare herself for his final deceit. Deshanna’s voice echoed through her head, “See past others’ deceit and wrap it around yourself.” 

Pyria knew her window of opportunity was passing. She could feel with each breath his hesitation to keep holding her. Allowing her knees to buckle under her, she pushed the rest of her mana into the daggers strapped onto her torso. She hoped she had enough strength to move fast enough.

She took advantage of the momentum gravity had lent her, pushing him down towards the ground with her weight she closed her eyes and sent a silent prayer to Dirthamen, thanking him for allowing her this deceit. The gentle ‘pop’ of her daggers breaching his skin felt electrifying. She squeezed her eyes further shut against the grunt that he let out, and twisted.

His eyes snapped up as his mouth opened, a howl escaping him as he struggled to push her off of him. She pushed the carefully placed bottom dagger deeper into his side, and the other deeper into his heart. The poison was working through him quicker than either she or Vivienne would have expected. 

Had he been weakened before she got here?

The thought was pushed away from her mind as his eyes met hers, the purplish tinges turning a sickly grey. He roared through his pain.

“You are giving away your chance at freedom! You do not know what you are doing!” His eyes had mirrored hers when Cassandra had died. The pain of betrayal was one she knew well, but she had no strength left to sympathize. 

“Please Solas, you gave me no choice.” The words dripped out of her like the weariness that seeped through her bones.

“I was fixing everything!” He bared his teeth at her, emulating much of the wolf she had come to fear throughout her childhood. 

The grey color pulsed through him as his form shook underneath her. His magic was fading, and his hold on the physical was wavering at best.

Fur started to replace the armor under her nails, and she flinched, weary of his true form, though she had anticipated it. 

It would be his last line of defense, she had never doubted this. The eyes began to blink on his forehead and she fought the nausea that swam in the pit of her stomach. She would keep her hands steady, and she would not allow him to expel the poison. She chanted this command to herself as he thrashed underneath her daggers.

She felt claws batting against her stomach and cried out against the pain, her eyes locked in fear as she pressed his body down towards the marble with the last of her remaining strength.

She did not hear his last breath, she only heard the deafening silence as he ceased to move and the fur fell away to skin. Her breath shuddered and she collapsed on the floor, only opening her eyes when she lost track of time. 

His body lay next to her, his eyes wide open and devoid of any color other than gray. The blood pooling around his body made the grim scene worse. 

Her hand fell to his chest, the imprint of the jawbone poking through to her hand. She shuddered and gently removed it, knowing it had been his undoing. Tucking it into her breast band she allowed the bile that had been fighting to her throat to release.

The scream she let out felt as if it were not her own. If no one had been aware of her presence, they would be now. She knew if Solas had maintained barriers for his privacy that they would be gone with him.

She panicked to imagine what would be done to her if she were found unconscious next to the dead body of a God.

In her state of exhaustion she managed to reach into her belt, choking back what she hoped to be a regeneration potion. She didn’t feel the effects, and crawled forward, trying to sense any remaining magic. His orb might protect her. 

When she got her breathing under control she could hear the faint hum of a familiar magic. It shot a heaviness through her heart but she rushed towards it anyways, finding her feet more compliant now that she had hope of immediate survival. Footsteps began to echo towards the large room she was in, rushed as they were, she could only maintain a fairly slow pace in comparison. She ducked through one archway after another, all amply decorated in tiled depicting the evanuris June. she scoffed at his choice of location.

The hum became louder and louder as she descended levels upon levels of stairs. She didn’t know when she had lost the footsteps, but the humming seemed to drown out all sense of sound and space. It wasn’t long until she found herself before a warded door. 

The wards were not familiar, and she knew them to be foreign. If they had belonged to Solas she might have been able to break through them. Panic began to set in yet again as her hope quickly fought to get away from her. 

She had never known how to break wards. Her blind spots in her magic only became more apparent as she lost companion after companion. She knew she had been weak to assume they would always be there to cover her, but she had insisted time and time again, as Dorian had tried to teach her new things, that she would always have him; and he, her. 

She had been selfish in trying to keep her own hope alive. She knew this now as she stared death in the face once again. She would simply have to go through it. 

She gently touched the barrier, and it gave way to her hand. She paused, had this been created with the intention of letting her inside?

She tested it again, and nodded her head in conviction when it gave again. She swallowed and pushed open the door, the smell of blood magic filled the room and she looked around in panic as she saw the dead bodies scattered around the room, devoid of the blood that had once lent their bodies color. She found humans, dwarves, dalish and qunari, all heaped into corners.

She covered her mouth, and prayed this had not been Solas’ doing. Her eyes went around the room, worried she might find a familiar face, until they rested upon an eluvian, beautifully pristine, but it pulsated with the blood surrounding her. 

She swallowed past the thickness of her fear. Something was not right.

As the fear drained her pulse from her ears, she once again heard her pursuers, their footsteps light but quickly tracking down the stairs. With a rush she shut door behind her, setting her own wards alongside the ones that had allowed her entrance. 

She was locked in a basement with an artifact of ancient Elvhen blood magic. She could just hear Bull’s nervous chuckle echoe from her memories. She murmured to herself “...demons, blood magic, and an indefensible position… shit.” The last word was her own addition as she smoothed a hand over her face.

She knew the Eluvian was her only exit, and by this point she could hear the sentinel’s clamoring to take down the barrier. She silently thanked whoever had created it.

She squinted her eyes in frustration as her ears reflexively flattened against her head. She had never wanted to step through another Eluvian after the one she had gone through hours before, but once again she was cornered and forced to take the best of worst options. 

She bit back the bile that accompanied her self deprecating laugh and tossed her body through it, fully expecting to find death on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a long time coming I think!
> 
> Let me know what you thought in the comments, it's always important to hear feedback.


	3. Chapter 3

Pyria Lavellan found herself in a situation she was not quite fond of repeating yet again. She had been left alone in a room, her mind in a fog,where she presumably was being held captive. This apparent news did not shock her. She wasn’t certain of what exactly she had been expecting at this point. The blood infused eluvian hadn’t taken her anywhere but back to June’s temple. An elaborate trap set by Solas to pique her interest perhaps? She shook her head, with a clearer mind she might have been able to see through the plan. She touched her hand to the large bruise forming on the back of her head, the blood long dried by this point, and attempted to assess the situation.

This room was far cleaner than the ones she had been running through before she jumped through the final Eluvian. The archways seemed to be made of plaster, the floors a brilliant marble that only slightly glinted against her eyes, despite the lack of actual sunlight. After narrowing her eyes against the light she noticed, to her surprise, that there were no windows adorning the rooms. It seemed lit only by what seemed to be a light veilfire eclipsing most of the archways. Items lied strewn about the room. To her joy, they did not seem to be made for the intent of torture. Rather, they seemed to be instruments of measurement.

 

The thought came to her that she didn’t know where she was, and panic began to rise in her chest. She and Dorian hadn’t had time to go over an escape plan. They had barely figured out how they were going to get her to Solas when he had brought down the veil. All hope of coming out of this alive seemed gone at the time. She assumed Solas would kill her, and she knew Dorian had assumed the same.

There was no plan.

She needed to control her breathing as Solas had taught her. The unknown was not necessarily bad.

She pushed herself off the floor still in a panic, wincing at the slight limp that had formed for as long as she had been unconscious. She needed to move forward, she needed to find out where Solas’s people had taken her. And whether or not they knew that she had murdered him. Surely she would have been in much more extensive binding if they did. Her current state of being unbound in a locked room boded well for her. She had learned long ago how to pick locks, enchanted or otherwise. She only hoped that Solas hadn’t utilized what Sera would have called “ancient elfy lock shite”. She would have to take this one step at a time, and the first would be figuring out an immediate escape from the room she was currently housed in. 

Attempting to get her bearings, she closed her eyes and tried to hone in on the sounds around her. Faintly, voices flitted through the room, coming from the opposite side of the door. Elvhen, a seemingly odd dialect not familiar to her ears. It was neither Orlesian city elf, nor the dialect of her own people. The inflections intimated something of an inquisitive conversation. People trying to gain information from each other. She assumed it to be that of the sentinels aiding Solas. They had made it to her location after all. She noted the muted colors of the eluvian she had gone through. It seemed to have been a one time product.

The voices of the Sentinels began to rise, if only slightly as clarity pushed away the fog from the apparent concussion. She could only make out some words, and could assume only that her captors were speaking of...gardening? She furrowed her brow in frustration as she attempted to understand more of their conversation. The well spoke to her in hushed whispers, but the wards in this place seemed to quiet them down to a low hum. She cursed Solas for his foresight. She stepped carefully and lightly towards the door, assuming she could press her ear against it and hear more clearly. She had lost her shemlen boots somewhere along the way, and found the icy smoothness of the floor unsettling against her wrapped feet. From the clarity of their words, she assumed they could be no more than a few meters from the door. She counted four different voices, each at around the same distance from each other. 

She pressed her hand to what appeared to be a door knob. The contraption lit up at her gentle touch, glowing warm and red, instantly unlocking. She regarded it as elemental before finding herself crashing to the floor in an undignified pile. She let out a small string of curses as she immediately set out her own wards, pushing herself away from the door so as not to be cornered when the sentinels left their shock. She glanced up at her adversaries after she found her footing. 

Unarmed. They were unarmed and they were no sentinels. However they were certainly Elvhen. Their dress denoted a certain arrogance, the fabric very literally holding within it veil fire. It hardened with their shock, clinging closer to their bodies. A defensive armor then. Pyria found it surprising that they were able to remember this armor tech. Dagna would have had a field day.

They moved forward, not seeming frightened or shocked at all. Their faces were alarmingly stoic as they glided towards her. Their feet hardly making a noise. The individual on her left raised an inquisitive eyebrow, marking his skin with a slight dimple. 

The well tried its best to translate for her through the strange and thick magic of the place. “Who are you.” The language seemed choppy, and she was certain she must not have heard him right, or that the well had been lost to her through this place. Surely they knew who she was, she responded in kind, the well lending her no further aid.

“I am the inquisitor.” Her pride acted before she could decide it might have been a good idea to hide her identity. Though she would have been spotted by someone along the way. It wasn’t very easy to miss her, and she had lost track of the amount of timed leliana had attempted to convince her to hide her telltale white hair or lace it with pigment. Or to cover the scars she had left in place of her Vallaslin. 

She remembered how she had received them as if it were yesterday. She had begged Dorian to burn her markings back onto her face. So that when she was done being the inquisitor, since Coryphyeus had been defeated, she might be able to go back to her clan with some semblance of dignity, of respect. So that she wouldn’t have to tell them that she had let some outsider, some man who she barely knew, A man who had disappeared, a man who had left, take what remained of her identity, of her heritage. She hadn't known at that point what else he might do, that his explanations would mean nothing to her. That the man who had left was actually much much worse than simply a man who had left.

She had had to beg dorian to imprint it onto her through a scar. He was the only mage she trusted with the type of precision needed to imprint the exact outline of Dirthamen’s mark. She knew her clan would know it wasn’t her true vallaslin, she had no hope of not having to lie to them. The shame of her bare face and her fear of being alone in the world, rejected from Lavellan when the inquisition disbanded, allowed her this omission of truth.She had no illusions that she would be able to keep her friends with her, that they would stay by her. They each had their own lives to lead, their own stories to progress. The inquisition would remain a blip in their timelines. Eventually she wore down his resolve, her panic overriding his instinctual thought that she might regret the scar in the future, or that it might pain her. When in reality the pain was over in a moment, the fire glyph expiring fast enough to save her lasting agony.. She had faced the public with a scar in place of an intricate painting. Dalish still despite it all. 

Here, in this place it seemed to do her no favors. The elves mumbled to each other, disregarding her presence entirely. One touched his face, as if to ask another about her mark. Were they figuring out her identity? She couldn’t be sure. How had Solas found these people? Surely they were Elvhen. Yet, they were not sentinels, meant to protect anything. They seemed to be Elvhen aristocracy, and she had to wonder how they had avoided time when to her understanding, the ‘quickness’ had affected the entire race, without distinction. 

She allowed her body to relax. They weren’t currently trying to attack her, and she had to reserve what energy she had left. She peered past the group of chatting elves. She wasn’t sure how far this hallway went. It was semi-outdoor so she figured she could continue running, but wasn’t sure if there would be outer walls to block her path. To continue forward was the only option. She slowly raised herself from the ground with her palms facing the elves. They didn’t regard her as a prisoner, and with a touch of luck they might make the mistake of letting her pass. They glanced at her with little regard and continued their conversation, seemingly beckoning someone else over. 

Her adrenaline began to rise, her mana flowing through her veins and threatening to spill out of her palm. This person would surely not make the same mistake of misplacing her identity. She wasn’t that lucky. Alerted to her alarm, they began to speak softer, and she strained her ears to listen.

“Dirthamen. Get one of his people.“ Her brow furrowed. The well once again could not be translating that right. They were in a temple to June. There were no sentinels left at any of Dirthamen’s temples. She knew this to be a fact. She had ordered Leliana's scouts to search all the remaining temples that Solas could garner support from. She had lost Abelas to Solas, she wouldn’t lose any more skilled fighters. She had been certain she could sway them to the inquisition’s side. But they had all been empty, the scouts found bones in the place of sentinels. They hadn’t been sure if Solas had killed them in favor of not being the first to reach them, or if they simply had not withstood the test of time. 

More men approached, these significantly better armored and armed. Two archers and a warrior. She sent a silent prayer to Mythal for protection and lunged her body forward, using a simple rune to clear her path. The elves jumped back, all three of the armed group grabbing clearly enchanted weapons. She had no time to truly defend herself and threw up a barrier as she attempted to turn a corner past some remarkably tall foliage. In moments her feet were stuck to the ground, ice beginning to creep through her veins. She had no defense, her mana seemingly drained. Did they have a templar among them? Her heartbeat quickened yet again, the pounding rushing through her ears. Tranquility was not an option. 

She silently remembered Cullen, trying and failing to keep a straight face as they trained for defense against the red templars. 

“Pyria, Pyria focus!” He threw his hands up, smirking as he noticed where her attention was drawn. Solas had entered the courtyard, determined to watch her training.

Her commander had become one of her most steadfast friends in the wake of the breach. He had counseled her countless times on what they could possibly be up against, and in turn they had ended up discussing nearly everything they had on their minds. Even, his peculiar attachment to Cassandra. 

Pyria flushed red when she noticed her wandering eye had been caught. Of course Cullen knew about her and Solas. He didn’t have to flaunt the knowledge in her face. 

She refocused her footing and took a deep breath, mirroring Cullen’s stance. 

It had taken her a long time to trust him enough to participate in this manner of practicing. He would test her with his anti-mage tactics, of course without the lyrium that would allow him to make her tranquil. She had been forced to get over her fear of templars rather quickly. Cullen made that much easier, with his strict adherence to sobriety. He had taught her the best he could without lyrium, and now she had an arsenal of defenses to combat templars should she ever be in a situation where she was being held captive. 

She let out the first attack, allowing the lightning to crackle off of his shield. It was not something she was known for nor was it an element she was comfortable with. But, that was shy she chose it first. It caught him off guard, and for a moment he dropped his shield downwards, instinctively attempting to deflect a fire spell. She took this opportunity to fade step behind him, pushing her blunt staff edge to his neck. The force pushed him forward on to his knees. 

“Checkmate.”

Iron Bull clapped his large hands together from the sidelines. 

“Get em’ Boss!” He held out the vowels of the words in his low rumble and the chargers raised their mugs behind him, engaged in a round of bets. It seemed that most of them had bet against Cullen, a thought which brought a small smirk to her face. They had faith in her. 

Cullen raised his hands up in defeat, a dutiful smile crossing his features. 

“Good Job.” His stoic demeanor replaced the sparkle of pride she had watched flicker across his face. She offered her hand, and he graciously took it. A quick pat on the back and he resumed to his duties, yelling at his soldiers to quit ogling and to run drills. 

She turned to face Solas, a beaming smile on her face. 

“Mission accomplished!” She elongated her stride and reached his side. Pride showed clearly on his face. He was proud of her, as he often was for continuing to train despite her proficiency in magic.

“That was new.” The timbre of his voice suggested a slight interest in where she had learned the form.

She smirked. “I don’t only learn from you.” She motioned her hand upwards, towards the rooms where Vivienne took residence. She had been torn between learning rift magic or taking the route of the knight enchanter. She felt her preference towards control of the battlefield would lean her towards knight enchanter, but rift magic would lend her a set of skills completely new to her, and unknown to her adversaries. 

Pyria was prepared for this. If they had templars among them she had no need to panic. She would heed Cullen’s advice, and remain in control of the situation. She stood up, channeling her mana throughout her body and casting yet another barrier around herself. 

But what came was not Templars, but more mages, bearing the mark of Dirthamen. She panicked and gave in to her body’s instinct to flee. A quick fire spell sent to her feet did the job of loosening her limbs well enough. The decision was ill thought through as the two archers quickly stood in her way, and the Elves with Dirthamen’s mark grabbed her arm. Her rage found its way out of her once again, and she attempted to smother one’s face with fire, if only to momentarily shock them. But nothing came out. They had momentarily taken her Mana. She felt her limbs begin to shake as she quickly lost warmth. They were draining her. She was familiar with the practice but had never seen it attempted before, and with such ease.

She yelled Fen’ Harel’s name, daring him to come see what his people were doing to her, cursing Fen’Harel for putting her in this situation. For leaving her alone, with no clan, no friends, practically bare faced and now, being stripped of the only thing which she had maintained through all of it. 

They seemed to stare at her at that. Their names perking up at the mention of his name. She attempted to slip from their grasp in their schock, but they held on with iron grip. She resolved to thrash around. 

The elves clearly had no idea what she was speaking about, and she began to wonder if she was finding herself in some odd corner of the fade. If she had died as a direct result of jumping through the eluvian, then maybe this was a reflection of a past in which she did not live. But if it was a spirit’s memory, how could she be interacting with its participants?

The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up as she sensed an uncomfortably familiar energy washing over her. Footsteps echoed down the hallway and she mentally cursed herself for calling out to him. Clearly he was fine now, not wounded and not drained. She attempted to crane her neck to look him in the eye but found the elves holding her head in place with an unseen magic.

His footsteps seemed lighter, and her ears perked up as she tried to place his exact location behind her. 

Knowledge of your adversary will do when there is no defense. Solas’s own words echoed in her head.

“Solas, show yourself!” She ripped her feet forward, the only limbs movable under the weight of the unseen shackles bearing down on her, this caught the elves off guard, and with the immediate release of contact she felt her mana slipping back into her. 

She whipped her body around once more, finding herself in nearly the same spot she had been when she fell out of the room she was being held in. Confusion and panic crossed his face. But it was not him. The features made sense, the high cheekbones, the slight spotting of freckles, the dimple in his chin. But he had...hair? Magnificently long hair being held up in golden braces. His face lacked the telltale wisdom and his body seemed more lithe, more agile than it had previously been. She dared to call it lupine and inwardly groaned at her own choice of words. He wore a mantle of Wolf’s fur and a headdress fashioned in the style of a wolf’s skull. His clothes were lined with far too much gold thread to have been anything akin to his wiser self’s taste. She might liken the outfit to something Dorian would have worn.

If he were an ancient Elf.

In the times of Arlathan.

She had to take a deep breath in order to keep within her the hysteria hiking up her throat.

But it was Solas in front of her, and she knew this without a doubt as soon as he spoke. 

The words were hard to pick out, and as she stared him down she could only make sense of a touch of his sentence structure. She very clearly picked out te'olathe'lan. 

An idiot he had truly called her an idiot.

And perhaps to them she was. How much magic did they have access to, being not Elvhen in the truest sense, what did they see her as?

Her mind swirled as she tried to make sense of the current place she was in. Solas had hair and everyone was speaking a language she could barely grasp. She attempted to push the worst case scenario to the back of her mind and focused once again on the task at hand. He looked flustered, and slightly panicked. His eyes showed no sign of recognition, and fear creeped into the edge of her mind. This wasn’t the Solas she knew. The Solas she knew didn’t seem to have made it through the eluvian. The Solas she knew, her Solas was truly well and dead. 

The man before her was a God at the height of his power. She remembered how he had remarked once that he had been a foolish and brash young man, quite flashy in his youth, and the image before her could only confirm that.

How had he succeeded in time magic? Had he been intending to go through this himself? How long ago was she placed?

He strode towards her, hands clenched behind his back until the very last moment. The movement of his arms reaching toward her seemed to blur as the fabric on his robe caught an odd light. The gold flecks moved in something of the same pattern that the marble floor had previously been swirling in. She mentally tucked a note into the back of her mind to figure out what kind of fade magic that could have been. The movement certainly did not have a natural speed to it, and his muscles must have been augmented by some form of magic, though she could not place what type. 

She found no sense in attempting to flee and merely braced herself for an attack of some sort. What did they all think of her? Did they believe she was a runaway slave? Were they about to return her to Dirthamen? The thought seemed unreal. Did her disheveled armor mean anything to them? To meet him, to see him, and to serve him would be an honor, but surely a real god would understand her purpose, would sense who she was. Was Mythal here too?

Her train of self-questioning was cut short by Solas’s hands around her shoulders, shaking her and yelling at her in a tongue she didn’t understand. It was real Elvhen, from the times of Arlathan. She fought the instinctual urge to remember everything he said to report back to her keeper. She swallowed past her adrenaline and screamed back at him, attempting to match his volume.

“Teleolasan!” It was difficult to mimic his inflections, but she did her best.

He quirked an eyebrow, his demeanor suddenly changing as if something clicked. He released her with one hand and pressed a palm to her forehead, gentle heat and a pain comparable to that of a night after drinking with the Iron Bull. His eyes widened even further, but she could tell from the vein popping out of the side of his head that he was still confused.

Nonetheless he easily transferred over to common tongue.

“You will come with me.” His lips trembled as he spoke, his hesitancy easily spotted by eyes accustomed to his character. She was not sure what could be inspiring this degree of hesitancy in place of inquisitiveness. He seemed to repeat his earlier statement again in the Arlathan dialect before pushing her in the the opposite direction, washing away the magic which had kept her still.

She dared not fight against him, as she knew in this place her defenses were easily bested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long wait!
> 
> I hope this chapter is as fun to read as it was to write. Next chapter will put everything into a normal context I promise!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is another piece that I have almost completely planned out! I can't wait to share it with you all. Updates should be fairly regular for the rest of the summer. Don't hesitate to leave kudos! They keep me going.


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